Factions

I'm surprised that I haven't really talked about 5e's use of Factions previously. So, here it is...

To it's credit, 5e at least tries to build some roleplaying elements into characters - they have Traits, Bonds, and Flaws that tie into the Inspiration system, and there's a space on the character sheet for a Faction. "Lost Mind of Phandelver" then introduces representatives of five factions which PCs can then either join or not (and later adventures then use those factions to a greater or lesser extent).

Unfortunately, almost all of those roleplaying aspects don't really go anywhere in the game - the Inspiration system really depends on the DM paying attention to five unique elements for each of the 4-6 players at the table and remember to actually award Inspiration (yeah, right...), while the Factions mostly don't actually do anything in the game - they just kind of sit there once introduced.

Which is all rather unfortunate, as it's really quite a neat idea.

Building Better Factions

My inclination with Factions is to largely ignore them for most campaigns, but for campaigns where they are important to put in the effort to make them really important. For example, my proposed "The Quest for Memory" campaign doesn't really have a place for Factions. They'd just be taking up headspace that could be better used for other things, so I'll just ignore them. By contrast "Blades in the Desert" puts Factions front-and-centre, so I want them to actually matter.

With factions, my feeling is that less is more - I think a small number of well-detailed factions is better than many shallow ones. Additionally, all factions need to be somewhat ambiguous in their motives. That is, you probably don't want a clearly 'good' faction or a clearly 'evil' faction, as then the players will find themselves guided by what they 'should' do, which rather negates choice.

In fact, I'm inclined to think that the ideal number of factions is five. And, as the diagram below shows, each faction should be allied with two other factions (the blue arrows) and opposed to two others (the red arrows).

This means that the factions are inherently in an unstable balance, which is rife for generating adventures - no faction can become dominant alone, due to the two opposed factions, and if two factions together become too powerful then a fragile alliance of the other three will move to oppose them. But as soon as the need ceases to be desperate, that fragile alliance will break up due to inherent tensions, and the status quo will be resumed. (Of course, the PCs are a wild card in this - by their efforts they may be able to secure outright victory for their faction(s)).

Of course, each faction then needs goals - what do they want to happen? What do they want to not happen? (Of course, putting the goals at odds is an easy way of generating opposition, though not the only one.)

Factions also need an internal structure, be it a loose collection of cells, a formal hierarchy, or whatever. There needs to be a way for PCs to get involved, and there probably need to be some ranks within the faction, and ways of rising through those ranks. And, ideally, there need to be some sort of benefits associated with rank, so that the PCs want to actually rise through them. That's especially true if there are obligations associated with being in a faction; the benefits need to outweigh the costs or PCs will just walk away.

My gut feeling as regards Factions, at least in a normal campaign, is that they are probably best left in the sidelines for most of the early levels. By level 4 you probably want to have introduced all the factions and have most PCs formally joined to one of them (not necessarily the same one throughout the group, but be wary of conflicts).

The majority of play with Factions probably takes place in levels 5 - 10 (the second tier). In these levels, I would expect the PCs to fairly rapidly rise through the ranks within their Faction, perhaps as often as one rank per level. By 10th level, they should probably be amongst the movers and shakers within their faction. As they move into the third tier, then, one of two things can happen: either the PCs become the leaders of their faction, or the PCs simply transcend their factions as they move on to bigger and better things. Either is valid; it really depends on the needs of the campaign.

And that, I think, is that. In a later post I'll flesh out the five factions in the "Blades in the Desert" campaign... unless those cease to be relevant.